If you have never experienced the pleasure of only carrying to the roof one hose, you are really missing out. Lugging around a pump-up sprayer is for the birds and foaming can be a hassle too. I show you in this video all you need to be able to apply chemicals using your pressure washer, then with one little step switch right to rinsing it off.
Mixing the chemical is the same. Yes it does get watered down, but the gallon per minute and pressure from your machine make up for it. Remember to add a little bit of surfactant to your mix so you can see where you spray and also it will give it some dwell time. Dawn works just fine as a surfactant.
Check out the video and leave your comments, suggestions, etc.. below.
By the way got your video for bagging the hoods was great even though I been doing it my way for years I pick up quite a bit was worth every penny I spent on it!
Thanks for your help have a great weekend!
Randy L.
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How many times have you sent out a postcard campaign and only got a few calls? How many times did somebody call you weeks, months or even years after receiving your postcard?
Wouldn’t you like to get responses right away instead of months later?
Well, I know how!
It’s a well-known statistic that only about 3% of people in any given market are in the “BUY NOW” category at any given time. It’s also and accepted statistic that 1% return on a postcard campaign is considered good.
So, lets say you send out a targeted 100 postcards. Only 3 of them are in the buying mood and looking for someone right now. Another 7% or so are possibly thinking about it and could be swayed if given the right offer.
So, you have a total of 10%, or 10 cards that have any chance of getting you business, correct?
Next month you will have a different 10 that are in need of your services, then the same thing the month after that. What most people do is send out another 100 postcards, month after month after month to the same list until you finally get to all of them that are finally in the “Buy Now” category. Do you do that?
Ask any worthwhile marketer and they will tell you that response rate goes up dramatically the more you hammer the same list. The first mailing may produce 1% return; the second, 3%, etc…
That seems like a lot of money to send out all those postcards though, doesn’t it?
Here is what Ant does
Put together a postcard that offers a special deal for a limited time. Do a small amount to a targeted list!!! I can’t stress that enough. Don’t buy 5 billion postcards that are exactly the same.
Don’t make a postcard that doesn’t have a deadline either!
Anyway, off my soapbox. Along with your offer and deadline on your postcard, mention a special page that they can go to to lock in that offer even if they are not ready to “Buy Now”. Even if they are just considering having you bid the job, they must “register” on that page before the deadline.
They are not committing to anything, they are simply putting themselves on a list to be able to take advantage of the great offer when it comes time for them to need your services.
For instance: Let’s say that your car is getting old and it’s almost time for a new one. The local car dealership has an awesome $10K off promotion that’s only good for next weekend.
You’re not quite ready to get the car just yet, but you want to take advantage of that $10K off when you are ready. All you have to do is register on their site and you are locked in for that deal until it’s time to buy. Make sense?
Here are the benefits for YOU as the contractor -
Once they register to be grandfathered in on the special deal, they are automatically placed on your emailing list.
Now, you can market to them any time you want at the push of a button – FOR FREE!!!
Now it won’t take 7 or 8 postcard mailings to that person, it will only take 1 postcard mailing and ever how many emails.
BAM!!! How much money did you just save? If you don’t know how to do all the technical stuff to make the mailing list, don’t worry, it’s super easy. Here is where to go. Email me if you need help.
Ant
“Who Else Wants More Sales From Their Website Traffic, Without More Effort?”
How much business do you get from your website? If your answer is “not enough” or “I don’t know” then you will appreciate this article. If your answer is “I don’t even have a website” then leave me a comment below and I’ll do a lesson on building an efficient website so you can get into the year 2010.
So, you have a website and you have some traffic coming to it with your Google Adwords campaigns or other form of internet advertising. Hopefully you have some analytics so you can track how many people are coming to your site, and where they are coming from.
If this already sounds too technical and you don’t even know what the heck an analytic is, just hang in there…
Your analytics is telling you that you have 30 visitors coming to your site everyday, but nobody has clicked on your “Click For Free Quote” button. Why isn’t anybody clicking on that? Don’t they want a free quote?
After all, I just got through telling them how great I am, what services I provide and what areas I cover. I told them that my quality is better than everybody else’s and have some before and after hood cleaning pictures or roof cleaning pictures (or whatever service you provide) to prove it!
You paid good money to have the fanciest graphics on your site. The layout, the colors and pictures are how the “guys on the forums” and your graphic artist guy told you to put it. Why isn’t it getting you jobs?
I’ll tell you why, but first let me share some information that may help a little bit.
At any given time, in any given industry there are only about 30% of consumers that are ready to buy. It’s actually more like 10% are ready to buy, but about 30% are able to be swayed. The rest of them aren’t interested, the time isn’t right or they are happy with their current provider/service/product.
Does that mean that they will never be in that 30% that IS ready to buy now? No, it just means that they aren’t ready now! So, if you have 30 visitors coming to your site everyday, at best you only have a chance of selling your service to 10 of them.
It still cost you money to bring them to your site, right?
If only there was a way to hit them at the “right time”…
If only you could know when they are in need of your service and send them an advertisement so you are the person they think of when that service comes up…
If only you were there at the push of a button when they come into their restaurant and the current hood cleaner left a mess all over their kitchen…
If only you were a push of a button away when that business owner walks through his parking lot and sees his concrete carved up by the pressure washing company the night before…
If only you could do all this without sitting in front of the computer all day and night and have it be automated…
Well, it is possible and it already exists. Matter of fact, I’ve been using this service for over 2 years now and it has worked flawlessly.
Before I tell you what this service is, let me tell you what it IS NOT.
- It isn’t FREE.
- It isn’t outsourcing a person from another country that doesn’t speak your language very well that you pay sweat-shop type wages to have them sit around and do this stuff for you.
- It isn’t complicated enough that you need a computer nerd show you how to use it. (though it does take some copy and pasting ability)
Now, some of the things that it is:
- It is cool.
- It is a huge TIME SAVER
- It is dependable and consistent.
- It is worth every penny.
Now let me tell you why this service that I’m talking about is soooo important to have; why it’s almost mandatory if you plan on keeping that other 70% of “Not Yets” around long enough until they are buyers.
It’s a proven fact that most people need to be exposed to any service or product at least 5 times before they decide to buy. It’s also true that only about 10% of your average salesmen return more than once after being told no.
Most people aren’t ready to just click on a link to have some pushy sales person come visit their restaurant or home to sell them something after browsing a website for a couple minutes. A relationship needs to be established first.
Let me give you an example:
Let’s say that you come to my house because I have some puppies for sale. I’m on an important call but tell you to go ahead and grab yourself something to drink from the fridge if you want and I’ll be right out.
What are the chances that you will do that? Not good, right? Even if you’re thirsty, you’re probably not going to go into my refrigerator and get yourself something to drink. It would be awkward, wouldn’t it?
Scenario 2 –
You come inside, I’m on the phone and I tell you to have a seat. I go to the refrigerator and get you a nice cold water because I know it’s hot and you must be thirsty. I walk over and hand it to you.
What are the chances that you drink it now? VERY GOOD, right? It would almost be rude to NOT take it.
That’s exactly how you must think of your website. If somebody has taken the time to answer your adwords ad, or however they made it to your site, they are thirsty. Give them something to drink and you will make a friend and start building a relationship.
Even if they aren’t ready for a “FREE Quote” just yet, give them something of benefit (NOT A SALES LETTER DISGUISED as a benefit!!!) and keep giving them something of value until they are in that “ready to buy” category.
If you are saying to yourself, “I’m not made of money, I can’t give away a whole bunch of free stuff”, then you are just like me. However, information that helps restaurant owners, managers, homeowners, etc is readily available for free and just has to be sent to them. And, it’s free to send when it’s done through email.
Let’s just say that I know my tires aren’t going to last much longer on my truck. I’m not quite ready to buy yet, but in my research I come across a web page that has a free offer on the side that says something like
“GET THIS FREE REPORT ON HOW TO MAKE YOUR NEXT SET OF TIRES LAST LONGER BY SIMPLY ENTERING YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS BELOW”
I enter my email address and immediately get some great information on tire pressure, the differences in load ranges, what the rubber is mixed with to make certain tires and other goodies like that. Then at the bottom of that, there might be something like
“WHEN YOU’RE READY FOR A NEW SET OF TIRES, COME CHECK OUT OUR GIANT WAREHOUSE ONLINE WHERE WE BEAT ALL PRICES – GUARANTEED!”
Well, I’m still not ready to buy, but a week later I get another email from that same company with a great story from a satisfied customer of theirs that had a blow out on the freeway, but because the tires were this special mixture of rubber and wires she was able to make it another 2 miles to the service center and out of danger’s way. Great story.
I check my tires the next time I get in my truck, but I’m still not ready to buy.
About a week after that I get another email from them telling the proper way to check the tire pressure and attached to the email is a nice little excel spreadsheet that is used for a log of when the tires were rotated and such.
I print that out. I go to my truck and notice that it looks like the front passenger side is getting pretty slick…
That’s how it works guys. Build a relationship. Give valuable information; make it about your customer and the sales will follow.
When you use the service that I’m getting ready to tell you about, all of this is done behind the scenes with you only doing the work ONE TIME!!!
That service is Aweber. You can learn more about them HERE.
I have been using their service for years now and it has worked flawlessly. They keep you legal and non-spammy. You go through a simple process of building your form that will be on your web page, then it automatically turns it into html jibberish that you just copy and paste where they tell you to. It’s so simple!
Now you have a system in place that captures not only the ones that are ready to buy now, but also the ones that are not ready.. yet. It allows you to expose them to your service ever how many emails you want to set up.
It may take a week for them to call, or it may take a year for them to finally call, but either way, you’ve spent the same money on the initial advertising and you didn’t waste that money.
I can’t tell you how easy and how worth it is to have this service.
So, you have a couple options. You can leave that “Free Quote” crap up and hope that somebody opens your fridge and gets something to drink, or you can GO HERE to Aweber, sign up for a membership and virtually hand them an ice cold water.
They even have a FREE test drive going on right now.. check it out
Can You Have More Sales, Too?
Helping over 75,000 businesses like yours raise profits and build customer relationships using AWeber’s opt-in email marketing software for over 10 years.
This article gives me great pain to write. I believe that there has been a great injustice committed against hood cleaners every where and one of the parties involved, I would consider my friend. I have done videos about their products because I love them. I have sat on the board of directors of the Grease Police with this guy and know that he is an honest, hard-working, smart, cream-of-the-crop kind of guy. That’s why it makes it so hard to believe that he has sold out all hood cleaners in a big way. He’s probably going to hate me after this, but I can’t help it, for the sake of the industry, I feel that you guys – my readers- need to know what’s going on!
What am I talking about?
In case you haven’t heard yet, Driploc has sold out to BELFOR Holdings, Inc., The parent company of HOODZ. Now, I have nothing against HOODZ as a company, but they are selling franchise opportunities in YOUR backyard. Here is a press release from their website:
HOODZ, Nation’s Kitchen Exhaust Cleaning Leader, Grows to 50 Locations in 4 Months of Existance
Ann Arbor, MI – HOODZ, the nation’s largest and most reputable kitchen exhaust hood cleaning franchise, has quickly become the nation’s largest and most reputable franchise in the industry by growing to more than 50 franchise locations in 26 states in just four months.
Having launched the franchise in July 2009, HOODZ has already opened locations in markets such as Atlanta, Tampa, Raleigh and Houston. With more than 50 HOODZ locations now in development as part of its strategic expansion, the company is anticipating even more explosive growth in 2010, and is poised to reach 150 total franchise locations by 2011.
They are planning on having 150 locations by 2011? If you thought you had competition before, just wait.
My problem with this is every time you purchase a Driploc product now, you will be feeding your competition. In my opinion, there is a HUGE conflict of interest in this setup. Every grease containment pad you get from Driploc, every magnet you buy, every hinge you put on will put money in the pockets of your competition. Unless of course you have a HOODZ franchise.
So what do you do?
Well, there are solutions. There are other grease containment systems out there that work well. I am in the process of setting up an interview for you all to hear with Jason Wellman, owner of The Grease Box. I believe that his systems are a GREAT alternative to Driploc’s. If you would like to send in questions for me to ask him, feel free to do so. That covers our grease containment needs.
What about magnets? Well, you can always go with the big square Harbor Freight magnets that I show in my first hood cleaning weekly tip. They’re $5 and strong.
Hinges: Good luck with that one. Driploc’s hinges are bombsheezy. They are so awesome, that the owner of the hood cleaning school I went to tried to claim credit for inventing them and was selling them as his. Captive Air hinges are good, but conditions have to be perfect for them to work. They’re fairly easy to install, but again, conditions have to be pretty much perfect. So, the jury is still out on hinges. If you have a suggestion, pass it along.
Unfortunately, Driploc didn’t ask my opinion before selling out. They are smart guys over there and they are good guys that is why this is so surprising and disturbing. I’m sure they made a wise financial decision for their company, but at what cost to the industry, did they do it? I, for one, feel betrayed.
The city of Minneapolis is really cracking down on their requirements on kitchen exhaust cleaners. I’m not really sure if I like it or not. I like the idea, but not sure how it will work out.
They are asking for a lot of pictures from each cleaning, by each company. These will take hours to go through. If the inspectors would do their jobs in the first place and actually inspect the work, this would not be needed.
They all complain that they don’t have the time to inspect that many systems. Well, how in the world are they going to sit and look through hundreds and hundreds of pictures every week?
Like I said, I do like the idea, just don’t know how it will actually play out. The bad guys will figure out ways around it and the little guys or the not so computer savvy guys will be S.O.L.
Provide the following:
1. Clear digital photo of the work order # and building address and tenant.
2. Before and after photos of all hood components.
3. Before and after photos of the roof area around exhaust fans (including fans) from at least 2
adjacent sides, identify all pre-existing conditions.
4. Provide horizontal and vertical photos of building duct system and entire building trunk
system.
5. Provide before and after intake photos of fans.
6. Provide before and after photos of the back-side of fan blades.
7. Roof mounted system must provide a digital view of the vertical rise looking-up and a view
looking-down). one before and after photo of hinged roof-mounted fan opened and closed.
8. Provide before and after photos of horizontal and vertical access plates.
9. Provide photos that clearly identify all sides of vertical & horizontal runs & rises
10. Provide before and after photos of the back of the filter rails top and bottom.
11. Provide photos for the completed hoods with filters out and another with the filters properly in
place
I also wonder how it will effect the restaurant owners that already complain about the prices when they find that their price will probably go up to account for the extra time the hood cleaner will need to do this extra work?
I think companies should be doing this anyway, don’t get me wrong. I think I will try to put together a video for my readers to teach them how to take the pics, upload them, and email them or host them and send the link to the Fire Marshal.
Would that help you guys?
Note: Cleaning of commercial hood systems shall encompass the entire building’s
vertical and horizontal trunk systems. Cleaning only the commercial hood, plenum
and duct collar is not acceptable and the system will not be approved. The City of
Minneapolis doesn’t issue confined space entry permits; contractors must comply
with OSHA Standards.
This will hopefully work out for the good in the long run…
Here is the page for the requirements.
Hey Guys,
I just found this FREE little tool that I think we could use when setting appointments for cleanings or even marketing new business. It’s always nice to stand out from the crowd when sending marketing materials through the mail.
It’s called Map Envelope. What happens is you type in the location to the place of business or residential address that you are marketing to and it pulls up the pinpointed location through Google Maps. Then, below the address it gives you the opportunity to type in what you can use for a headline! It’s great.
For instance: Say you wanted to clean a restaurant and you had the address. Just type it in the first box. Now, in the second box, type in your small headline that will grab their attention and call them to action. Something like “Call Now To Schedule Your Hood Cleaning” always works great for things like this.
Next, you hit “Preview” and it opens another tab showing you what it will look like on the piece of regular paper.
Hit Print.
It prints it out on a regular sheet of paper. Cut out the map leaving no white areas on the edges.
Then, simply fold on the dotted lines that they provide and BAM, you have yourself an envelope. Pretty cool.
Unless you are using some pretty heavy card stock to print with, I don’t know if I would trust sending this through the mail, as is. Dropping it into an envelope might be the better choice so it doesn’t get lost in the mix. I think they would be great for scheduling cleanings and things of that sort. Below is the link, check it out for yourself and post in the comments section below what other uses might be helpful.
There was an interesting article Published in the Media Post News by Karlene Lukovitz today that really should concern restaurant owners. A study done says that people aren’t eating out as much as they use to and it’s not necessarily because of the poor economy.
The evening meal is the restaurant industry’s largest sales driver, but it’s been the weakest-performing daypart for the past decade, according to “Getting a Grip on the Supper Market.”
It goes on to say that young adults are the leading population for business, but they are not eating out as much as older folks.
“Younger people indicate that they’ve come to enjoy the benefits of staying at home and cooking and eating with their families,” Riggs says. “In addition to the family time, they cite benefits such as portion control and generally feeling that cooked-at-home meals are healthier and more nutritious.”
Meanwhile, those 62 and older are a bit more inclined to eat dinner out these days, in part because some of the already-retired have been relatively less affected by the recent economic troubles, but also because they relish the convenience of eating out, says Riggs.
So in conclusion, I think that restaurants need to consider this and start looking for ways to cater to young adults. As hood cleaning contractors, we rely on restaurants staying in business for our survival. Print the full article out and share it with your customers. Get them to thinking about the future. You will show that you are interested in their success and hopefully create some loyalty when it comes time to needing your services and there is somebody cheaper knocking on their door.
This was my first attempt at video testimonials from one of my great hood cleaning customers. I’ve come a long way since then, but I found that most people are usually willing to do a short little testimonial for you, if you ask. Video Testimonials help build your credibility and add life to your website.
Twitter came out with a nice little goody today that I thought you guys may be interested in. They now have a local “news” adjustment. You can choose your closest area and see what the trends are.
This is a nice feature if you have Twitter followers and a blog or something that keeps your customers up-to-date. Below is a short video showing the feature. Check it out:
If you don’t have a Twitter account, let me know and I’ll do a video on how to set one up. It’s easy and it’s free!
